Like Aria for an Athlete, Provincial Actors is a kind of absurd “Personal Best,” in which the nobility of the effort is underscored by the surety of defeat. Here the setting is the theater, where a second-rate troupe playing in the provinces struggles to stage a Polish classic, Liberation, with a hot-shot director from Warsaw. Director Agnieszka Holland is called by Variety's Ron Holloway “one of the most talented directors to emerge from East Europe during the past decade.... Provincial Actors is a comedy that has the aura of the Prague Film School (FAMU) about it, where Holland studied, and apparently learned a great deal from Milos Forman in the process. It's about the life, times, cares and foibles of playing theater in the deep provinces, so true to life that the viewer laughs and cries at the same time.... Best of all, Provincial Actors offers a rib-tickling metaphor on the cultural scene in Poland, or any country--even the political arena, if one accepts the saying the ‘the whole world is a stage.' There are also deeply profound and human scenes.... Great fun--and a memorable film.” Featured at the Cannes Critics Week, 1980.